the search for a town continues...and can someone shed some light on the whole Whippany vs east hanover schools? (Wayne: real estate)

[deja2779]

We have been looking to relocate our family for over a year now, finally, with a closing date on our current house set for sept, the dream has become a reality...or should I say a nightmare. Here are the stats

Major motivation - to get our city kids in the best public schools our budget will allow. I should clarify "BEST" to us, the best schools are not necessarily the top performing academically, but also have a large successful sports and arts program. I actually shy away from the top performing schools like chatham, & northern highlands, plus, our budget won't get us in those top performing districts anyway, unless I buy a condo or townhouse (which I am not interested in doing)

Budget - low to mid 600's in a town with 15k a yr in taxes or 700 in towns where the taxes are 8-10K. 4 bed, not on a main road, with a decent yard. anything 2500sq ft+ would be awesome.

Commute - driving only, train access not an issue for us. Would like mapquest to rate it at 50 mins or less without traffic to yankee stadium in the Bronx. Luckily, will be traveling very early in the am and leaving a little earlier around 3:30ish.

Here's our search history.....
Ramsey - this was my perfect town...until we started viewing houses. At the top of my budget I can get a 3 bed split that needs at least $200K worth of work. (not to mention I HATE splits) From there, we looked into every other Bergen county town, none of them worked for us for one reason or another.

Moving onto Wayne, our next destination...we went there a few times, went to dinner, did some shopping, and viewed a few homes. We can get more house for our money, but we just couldn't warm up to the area. We desperately tried, and even thought of just settling, but we just couldn't put our finger on why we weren't warming up to it...so we moved on.

We thought of Pequannack, & Kinnelon...no and no. Kinnelon is very rural to me and a whole portion had to be ruled out because the commute would be too long on those winding roads up in the hills. Pequannack was "meh" to us, our feeling was if we were going to move here we mine as well move to wayne.

Then comes in Morris county....I think we might have found it! we were looking at hanover twp (Whippany & cedar knolls) and east hanover and Florham park. But here's the thing, I read in some threads that in east hanover/ Florham park you can send your kids to school until HS then you have to send them to private or catholic...??? and a lot of people send their kids to the catholic schools in that area. Even the real estate agent I spoke to has her elementary kids in catholic...so confused. The Wayne schools are ranked 20-50 spots lower, but everyone says how great the wayne school system is. Whats the deal? or what am I missing? why aren't more people raving about these school districts? We def like the Whippany/cedar knolls area better than east hanover/ Florham park, but if anyone can shed some light on this school issue over there I would be very grateful.

[NJpoliticiansarecrooks]

You don't really think you "have to" send your kids to a private or Catholic high school, do you? Like you're breaking a rule if the kids go to the local public high school?

That part of your post is rather confusing.

Private/Catholic school is for people that don't mind paying for school twice.

[deja2779]

[quote=NJpoliticiansarecrooks;40636930]You don't really think you "have to" send your kids to a private or Catholic high school, do you? Like you're breaking a rule if the kids go to the local public high school?

That part of your post is rather confusing.

I guess I should clarify, my kids currently attend catholic school. However, I live in a place where the public schools are so bad you send your kids to catholic school for a better education and a safer school, not necessarily for religious purposes. Actually, there are a number of kids in my children's classes that aren't catholic at all, they are there because the catholic schools around here are MUCH better than the public. So off the bat, when I hear a lot of kids attend a catholic school in a town where the public schools "appear" to be very good, I question if there is something else going on that an outsider would not know about. The agent I spoke to said about 10 yrs ago the number of kids attending catholic spiked in these areas, but she couldn't tell me why. She also said east hanover had a rap of having bad schools. She is also the second or third person to say something similar to us about the schools over there. Did I just meet the wrong people? Thats what I am trying to figure out, based on report card ratings & everything else, the schools look pretty good.

[Cypher]

A bit late on this, but having lived in FP for years, I think the public school system is very highly regarded. You don't see many families at all sending kids to catholic school before HS. In fact, the local catholic school has recently had to merge grades for classes because of declining enrollment.

Once you reach HS, there are some that don't like the regional element of the HS and prefer to pay for schools like Seton Hall Prep, but it's far from a majority and far from a necessity. I actually believe it's a bit of a status thing for an area that has suddenly become much more affluent over the last 10-15 years. Hanover Park was ranked #26 in the latest NJ Magazine list of public high schools in the state, and seems to be on the rise as well. There are certainly no red flags with the public schools at all. In fact, it's part of what made the town No. 1 in the latest NJ Magazine rankings.

All those towns you were looking at are nice though, so I hope you found a great place to live!

[DPolo]

East Hanover is pretty good. East Hanover does not have an easy commute to Manhattan. you have to take the busswhich gets to be dreadful after a couple of years. Florham Park is also pretty good.

Sending kids to a catholic school, there nothing wrong with tax payer funded high-schools as far as I know. Some people choose to send their kids to a local Jewish private school, there is a pretty good one locally. There are Catholic schools as well. The reasons for doing so would be religious though. In religious school kids pray daily in public school they recite the pledge of allegiance.

If you don't have to commute to Manhattan, a 600k property in East Hanover or Florham Park, is not to bad

I grew up in Livingston, which is a neighboring town, my cousins are from East Hanover and attended that high-school.